Sheffield spa brings Victorian Turkish Baths back to life

A new day spa, called SPA 1877, has been launched in Sheffield following a £2m restoration of the city’s Turkish Baths.

SPA 1877 – named for the year the Turkish Baths originally opened – offers a traditional Turkish Bath with hammam along with steam and aroma steamrooms, saunas, a wet treatment room with an experience shower, a plunge pool and an ice cave.

Spa and beauty treatments include an exclusive sea salt scrub and Mont St Michael mud wrap, while hot stone massage and prescription collagen facials are also available.

The spa will also be the flagship UK spa for Algotherm products and the company is planning to hold a launch of its collection there.

The lower floor of the building is being converted into an exclusive hair salon, HAIR 1877, which will open on 4 June.

The spa is being run by hair stylist, Conrad Blandford, and his partner, beauty therapist, Clare Hurndall. Blandford recently managed Charles Worthington’s New York salon and prior to that, the Charles Worthington salon at London’s Dorchester Hotel in Mayfair.

Blandford and Hurndall are also SPA 1877's co-owners, alongside developer Steve Wilkinson.

The restoration of the Victorian Sheffield Turkish Baths is the final part of Wilkinson's development of the larger Sheffield swimming baths site, which also includes housing and restaurants.

The Turkish Baths closed in 1990 after 127 years and the developers of SPA 1877 have restored many of the original features, including mosaic flooring, glazed brick walls and arched ceilings.

“To create a modern, 21st century health facility within such a beautiful historic building is a unique challenge we could not afford to pass up,” said Blandford.

“A lot of the health clubs and salons you go into are very sterile, clinical places located in lifeless modern buildings. The whole idea behind SPA 1877 is that we have the amazing architecture and atmosphere of a Victorian health facility, to which we are adding modern design concepts and treatment ideas.”

The project has been keenly watched by the Victoria Baths Trust in Manchester, which was the winner of the BBC series, Restoration. The trust raised £3.5m during the tv campaign to restore the city’s own Turkish Baths.

Gill Wright, project manager of the Victoria Baths Trust, said: “Our staff and several consultants have already visited SPA 1877 and have been very impressed with what has been achieved.”

The Manchester scheme, however, aims to restore the Turkish Baths to what it was like in 1906, rather than applying modern treatments and services to the original architecture.